Wednesday, 11 March 2009

Canadians in the UK beware. A note on the TopTenTaxTidbits web page - see the 3rd bullet down - updated in February 2009 says that the CRA has obtained the UK bank records of Canadians in the UK and is checking whether they have declared the interest income. Too bad my bank hasn't actually paid me any interest that I could declare.

4 comments:

Edward
said...

Do you know how the CRA got this information? Did they already know who was living in the UK, and then went poking around the various banks asking for details on these people, or did they ask the British banks to give them information on anyone with an account who's Canadian?

I think the CRA's fishing expedition would be allowed under article 24 Exchange of Information of the Canada UK Tax Treaty (see http://www.fin.gc.ca/treaties-conventions/UK_-eng.asp), under which the two countries agree to exchange data they normally collect to prevent fraud or tax avoidance. It's HMRC to CRA, not from the banks. The UK taxes interest so HMRC gets everyone's info. How they determine who is Canadian, I'm not sure.

Ah, I see. I imagine HMRC is well aware of who's who over there, so it wouldn't be hard for them to let the Canadian government in on things. I'm living overseas myself (in my case, Japan), and I've wondered about these sorts of issues from time to time. Anyway, thanks for your response... I enjoy reading your blog and really appreciate your help.